SVF III.178
Stoic: Chrysippus of Soli · Ancient source: Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Philosophers, Book 7 — DL 7.85 · Source language: Ancient Greek · Source status: Testimonium
Original — Ancient Greek
Τὴν δὲ πρώτην ὁρμήν φασι τὸ ζῷον ἴσχειν ἐπὶ τὸ τηρεῖν ἑαυτό, οἰκειούσης αὑτῷ τῆς φύσεως ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς· καθά φησιν ὁ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Τελῶν, πρῶτον οἰκεῖον λέγων εἶναι παντὶ ζῴῳ τὴν αὑτοῦ σύστασιν καὶ τὴν ταύτης συνείδησιν. οὔτε γὰρ ἀλλοτριῶσαι εἰκὸς ἦν αὑτῷ τὸ ζῷον, οὔτε ποιήσασαν αὐτό, μήτε ἀλλοτριῶσαι μήτε [οὐκ] οἰκειῶσαι. ἀπολείπεται τοίνυν λέγειν, συστησαμένην αὐτὸ οἰκειῶσαι πρὸς ἑαυτό. οὕτω γὰρ τά τε βλάπτοντα διωθεῖται καὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα προσίεται.
StoicOs Translation
They say the living being's first impulse is toward preserving itself, since nature appropriates it to itself from the beginning — as Chrysippus says in the first book On Ends, declaring that what is first and proper (oikeion) to every living being is its own constitution and the awareness of it. For it was not likely that nature should estrange the creature from itself, nor that, having made it, she should neither estrange it nor appropriate it. It remains, then, to say that in constituting it she appropriated it to itself. Thus it repels what harms and admits what is akin.
Context
The opening of Diogenes' Stoic ethics: before virtue and the telos comes oikeiōsis, the doctrine of the first impulse — and Diogenes' express point is that it refutes those who make pleasure the first object of animal life.
Text visually verified against the page scan of von Arnim, SVF III (1903), no. 178, p. 43 (Vol. III OCR unreliable for Greek). Book title in the source: On Ends, book 1. The bracketed [οὐκ] is deleted by editors as printed by von Arnim (Zeller).
What the source actually tells us
Named with book and book-number, and with a compressed but recognisable argument (estrange / neither / appropriate — therefore appropriate): the elimination-structure bears Chrysippus' logical stamp. The classic locus for Stoic oikeiōsis.
Philosophical meaning
Ethics begins in the nursery of nature: the newborn creature is entrusted to itself, aware of its own constitution and caring for it. From this first self-appropriation grows, step by step, care for one's own reason, for others, and finally the life according to nature (III.4) — value has a natural history.
Scholarly uncertainty
Diogenes' compilation compresses a book-length argument to a paragraph; the word syneidēsis ('awareness') here is much debated — whether it renders Chrysippus' own term or a later gloss cannot be settled from this witness alone.
Go deeper
- Read SVF III.4 — the end: living in accordance with nature
- Read SVF III.175 — impulse is reason commanding
About this edition
StoicOs Ancient Library is a developing multilingual digital study edition of surviving early Stoic material. The Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta assembled by Hans von Arnim provides the traditional reference framework. StoicOs distinguishes carefully between fragments, testimonia, later reports and interpretation. StoicOs translations are prepared from the surviving ancient-language sources where available.
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